Story+1988-10-07+Harare,+Zimbabwe

´´Thanks….if you grew up….in the 60’s in the States you grew up during the Vietnam War ….that means when you turned 19, you were drafted….and most of my friends who went didn´t even really know where Vietnam was or have any real idea of the issues involved…. they got called and they went because their government told ´em it was the right thing to do, they had that blind faith that so many young soldiers have and that blind faith….in 1967 would get you killed….and now there’s 50,000 names on a black wall in Washington D.C, names of good people who fought a bad war….who didn´t have the information, the chance or the vision to make their own moral decision when the times called for it….now, I know they processed 15,000 South African visas for the show tonight….and I wanna say welcome, I’m glad you came….I guess there’s a lot of young guys out there that are conscription age for the South African army….I guess there can´t be much worse than living in a society that’s at war with itself….under a government at war with its own people and being required to support that government….and I just wanna say to all young South Africans that I do not envy your position….but we´re here tonight to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights….Article 1 which states ´All human beings are born free and equal….in dignity and rights and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood…..everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in the declaration without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, religion, political opinion, governments are supposed to protect these rights for all of their citizens´….and my prayers are with the young men here that you can use your hearts and voices in the struggle of the dignity and freedom of all the African people…..because whether it´s the systematic apartheid of South Africa or the economic apartheid of my own country, where we segregate our underclass in ghettos of all the major cities….there can´t be no peace without justice and where there is apartheid, systematic or economic, there is no justice…..and where there is no justice, there is only WAR !….´´
 * 07.10.88 Harare, Zimbabwe, intro to ´War´**

//Compiled by : Johanna Pirttijärvi//